Four minutes into the 1994 Oscars, host Whoopi Goldberg declared: “Tonight we gather to honour Hollywood’s best, which is also the world’s best”. The directors of the five films nominated for the Best…

With the Academy Awards ceremony just around the corner, it’s worth reflecting on some of the criticism triggered by the Oscar nominations and fuelled by the recent BAFTA awards. There was only one thing…

The 2015 Golden Globe nominations for Selma (Best Actor, Best Picture and Best Director) seemed to signal that the film’s chances were high for being on all the nomination lists for the rest of the awards…

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood has beaten off the competition to scoop the Best Picture Award at this year’s Baftas. Filmed in sections over 12 years, Boyhood is in some ways the ultimate cinematic take on…

In an early scene in Selma, a sunlit stairwell is the backdrop for several floral-clad girls chatting happily about the hair styles of Coretta Scott King. This gorgeous vision then explodes before our…

The staggering amount of information in the world can be overwhelming. This is partly why genres such as detective fiction are so popular – they resonate with the human desire to control and order the…

In January 2004, the third instalment of The Lord of the Rings received 11 Academy Award nominations. From the outset, it was the clear favourite in the Oscars race. Behind it, there was an assortment…

Recognition is a super-human process that requires sacrifice …. and a bit of flying.
Atsushi Nishijima/Twentieth Century FoxJanuary 29, 2015

What do Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Simpsons, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film Birdman have in common? All three utilise the concept of meta-theatre. The concept of meta-theatre, or meta-text, in its crudest…

Still Alice – starring Julianne Moore – tells the story of Alice Howland, a linguistics professor diagnosed with a form of early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Moore has already netted a Golden Globe and is…

Still Alice is a window into the lives of the millions of people living with Alzheimer’s disease.
Icon FilmJanuary 28, 2015

For many of us, memories are our most precious possessions; they makes us the people we are. Consider how you would feel then if your memories were stripped from you, as they are from people diagnosed…

Amid Golden Globe recognition and Oscar buzz, Damien Chazelle’s film about a young jazz student and his abusive teacher is pulling in viewers who would normally run screaming from the words “drum solo…

The Imitation Game has scooped up eight Oscar nominations this year, including the coveted Best Picture. Since its release in autumn 2014 the film has attracted widespread positive critical appraisal and…

This year’s Oscar nominations quickly prompted ire from all quarters. This isn’t unusual, the awards are an easy target. “Everything is awful”, moans the Telegraph: “The Lego Movie, the most successful…

Warning: this article contains spoilers. The Oscar nominations loom, and Bennett Miller’s quiet masterpiece Foxcatcher deserves recognition. The film is a genuine “state of the nation” story, something…

The movie Selma takes King – best known to Americans as an orator – and turns him into an organizer.
Wikimedia CommonsJanuary 9, 2015

It’s been almost 60 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. became a household name during the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and some may find it astonishing that, until the recent release of Selma, he’s…